3 Reasons ThingLink Virtual Reality is the Best Tool in Education

Are you ready to take a step towards bringing Virtual Reality to your school or classroom this year? We know your students are quite eager to become engaged in virtual learning spaces where they can explore, learn and create. As educators, we should foster and develop these desires and embrace this emerging medium.

Let’s explore the use of 360 images for Virtual Reality in Education and then learn 3 reasons why ThingLink Virtual Reality is the Best Tool in Education.

ThingLink is aligned with SAMR and designed to grow with you from start to finish!

ThingLink works with your existing equipment and is a sustainable resource.

HOW 360 IMAGES ARE USED FOR VIRTUAL REALITY IN EDUCATION

Virtual reality in education in itself can be a closeup view of a 360 image. Looking around a stunning image can be engaging. Exploring a 360 image can provide students with contextual learning experiences by bringing them a close-up view of locations captured through 360 photography. While the experience is sensory and emotional, we do not know what students are learning when they explore this type of image on an iPad or when they are fully immersed with a VR headset because the exercise is one of passive consumption.

Explore this plain 360 image, used for virtual reality. Students can pick up an iPad or pop their phone into a VR headset to look around. It’s cool, but what are they learning? Is this passive consumption?

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HOW INTERACTIVE 360 IMAGES ARE USED FOR VIRTUAL REALITY IN EDUCATION

This is interactive Virtual Reality built with ThingLink tags on top of a 360 image. Here is where Virtual Reality in Education gets interesting. Now we can add tags with details about images. But more importantly, we can add tags with things that are not there.

At this level, teachers can design lessons that guide students through an interactive journey to discover answers. Use of G Suite for Education tools allows designers to guide the learning and check for assessment through a form or quiz. At this level, lessons and activities can be designed to support the learning needs of all students. Use of audio, video, images and text can provide students with multiple ways to access information and demonstrate learning.

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Reason 1:

ThingLink Virtual Reality is aligned with SAMR and designed to grow with you from start to finish

Virtual reality experiences breathe life into all topics and subjects, taking your students to new, undiscovered worlds. To help educators seamlessly integrate ThingLink into instruction, we’ve aligned it to the SAMR model of tech integration and offered examples of ways to use ThingLink 360/VR to provide powerful student experiences at each level.ThingLink is a Tool that integrates with existing tech tools, like GSuite and it is aligned with SAMR

The highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy is creation, allowing students to acquire information and present it in a new way.

The ThingLink 360/VR editor allows students to construct knowledge about an image through research to present issues, identify problems, suggest solutions and present something original. This essentially provides students with the opportunity to use technology as it has been intended, to fill a societal need by offering solutions to a real-world problem.

Synthesize information from a range of sources (e.g., texts, experiments, simulations) into a coherent understanding of a process, phenomenon, or concept, resolving conflicting information when possible.

STANDARDS | TEACHING GOALS | TARGETED INSTRUCTION

Teachers can design 360/VR lessons that are aligned to standards

Reason 3:

ThingLink Virtual Reality works with your existing equipment and it is a sustainable resource

ThingLink 360/VR works on existing devices in your school and no special equipment is needed. Learn to design and create high-level learning experiences now, with or without VR headsets. Choose to invest in headsets, you can use the content you already created. This is so much flexibility here.

Chromebook

iPad with Teleport Editor App by ThingLink

Android tablet with Teleport Editor App by ThingLink by Google Play

Laptop or desktop with a browser

iPhone or Android phone with VR headset for the fully immersive experience.

You don’t need any special equipment, our Virtual Reality in Education platform works on a Chromebook, iPad, laptop, desktop and VR mode works through the web browser on your mobile phone.

Susan Oxnevad is the Director of Education at ThingLink. She strives to build a powerful network of educators who share a passion for using ThingLink to transform teaching and learning. In addition, she also hosts ThingLink webinars for educators and blogs about thoughtful ways to leverage the power of technology for teaching and learning on the ThingLink Blog for Education. Follow her on Twitter @soxnevad